In class we have discussed so much about the popular music that has influenced Brazil’s culture and who Brazil’s culture has influenced the world we live in today. One aspect that I find truly remarkable is the amount of Brazilian nationalism that is expressed in almost all Brazilian songs. The place that we can see this tremendous surge in Brazilian nationalism is in the movie Orfeu which we recently finished watching in class. This movie showed us, not only how important Carnival is to the country of Brazil, but also how much the music that we hear during the Carnival influences the thriving culture that Brazil has today.

Throughout the movie, we see the hardships that the people of Brazil are forced to endure, while they live in the shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro during the coming months of Carnival. These people went through life almost as if they had nothing to live for besides the Carnival itself. Every minute of every waking day, these people spent preparing for the Carnival whether it was on their costumes, their music, or their dance routines. During this time of preparation, there we street gangs that ruled the streets during the night and paid off the police so that they would never be held responsible for their actions against the people of Brazil. Since the movie was entirely in Portuguese, I do not remember the exact quote that Orfeu said during the movie, however; I believe that he said something along the lines of this, “it is unfortunate that this country has become overrun by the corrupt and manipulated by the strong” (Orfeu, 1999). With this quote, I believe that Orfeu is trying to point out to his fellow Brazilians that there is a problem with the Brazil that they live in. In my opinion, he is attempting to spark a movement against the corruption that lives in Brazil.

As I said earlier, the movie was not all about the terrible conditions that the poor had to face while living in the shantytowns, but it was also about the extreme nationalism to their city and their country. Throughout the movie we see different scenes where the people are preparing for the Carnival. In these scenes we see smiles on the faces of people who in reality have nothing to smile about. This shows how the music is able to touch the lives of everyone who hears it and how it can make people who are in the worst position possible feel like they are on top of the world.

In the book that we read during the class, Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization, we are able to see the influence that music has had not only on Brazil’s culture, but on many different cultures around the world. One of my favorite quotes from the book is, “In the domain of music, Orpheus is perhaps the prime symbol in Western history and tradition…..The first musical drama was, in fact, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (early seventeenth century)” (Perrone & Dunn, p. 49). This quote tells the reader how the music and culture from early works began to influence cultures in the western hemisphere which in turn influenced our culture here in America.

Works Cited
Orfeu. Dir. Carlos Diegeus. Perf. Toni Garrido. 1999. DVD.
Perrone, Charles A., and Christopher Dunn. Brazilian Popular Music & Globalization. Gainesville: U of Florida, 2001. Print.